Recovery of liquid fuel from hydrocarbon-rich microalgae by thermochemical liquefaction

Liquefaction of Botryococcus braunii, a colony-forming microalga, with high moisture content was performed with or without sodium carbonate as a catalyst for conversion into liquid fuel and recovery of hydrocarbons. A greater amount of oil than the content of hydrocarbons in B. braunii (50 wt% db) was obtained, in a yield of 57–64 wt% at 300 °C. The oil was equivalent in quality to petroleum oil. The recovery of hydrocarbons was a maximum (>95%) at 300 °C.     

Advanced fabrication technologies of integrated-type structure for a-Si solar cells

This paper proposes a new advanced fabrication technology for a low-cost integrated-type a-Si solar cell. Integrated-type cells provide many advantages and have been industrialized with a laser patterning method. However, a higher throughput and more efficient patterning method was required for applying a-Si solar cells to a power generating system. Plasma CVM (Chemical Vaporization Machining) was first applied to advanced patterning because of its advantages of high speed and selectivity. In this method, a plasma generated under high pressure localizes near the wire electrode and concentrates reactive radicals. As a result, we achieved an etching rate of more than 1 μm/s and selective patterning of a 200 μm-wide a-Si layer in 1 s multiline patterning was also developed for large-area modules.     

Investigation of pesticide residues in foods distributed in Kitakyushu City

We investigated 160 kinds of pesticide residues in 715 samples of 116 kinds of foods distributed in Kitakyushu city. Sixty kinds of pesticides were detected in 55 kinds of foods (204 samples) in the range of 0.002-22 mg/kg. Five kinds of pesticides in 7 samples violated the residue standards and the indication of "unused". The detection ratios of unregulated pesticide in domestic and imported foods were 27.8 and 33.0%, respectively. Iprodione, dicofol, diethofencarb, procymidone and chlorfenapyr (for domestic food) and total bromine, benomyl, chlorpyrifos, dicofol, fenvalerate, cypermethrin and dimethoate (for imported food) showed relatively high detection ratios. Chinese cabbage, garland chrysanthemum, tomatoes and green teas (domestic) and broccoli, bananas, grapefruit, lemons, oranges, frozen edamame and frozen kidney beans (imported) showed high relative pesticide detection ratios. Residual pesticides were detected with relatively high frequency in imported fruits, imported frozen foods and imported processed foods.     

Hebbian learning rule restraining catastrophic forgetting in pulse neural network

In this paper, a Hebbian learning rule restraining “catastrophic forgetting” is proposed on a pulsed neural network (PNN) with leaky integrate‐and‐fire neurons. The strong point of this learning rule is that a learning of new pattern does not destroy past ones, and that an efficient use of synapses is enabled. First, in order to consider the function of the learning rule, a fundamental experiment is carried out. Next, to compare the performance between the proposed learning rule and conventional ones on the application, simulation experiments are examined using autonomous behavior robots which are forced to learn concurrently two different environments. The results of the experiments show that the proposed learning rule clearly restrains “catastrophic forgetting” and enables working of more efficient than conventional PNN learning. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 151(3): 50–60, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.10343     

Melting of a vertical ice cylinder inside a rotating cylindrical cavity filled with binary aqueous solution

The melting of a vertical ice cylinder into a homogeneous calcium chloride aqueous solution inside a rotating cylindrical cavity with several rotating speeds is considered experimentally. The melting mass and temperature are measured on four initial conditions of the solution and four rotating speeds of the cavity. The temperature of the liquid layer becomes uniform by the mixing effect resulting from cavity rotation and it enhances the melting rate of the ice cylinder. As the cavity‐rotating speed increases, the melting rate increases. The dimensionless melting mass is related to the Fourier number and the rotating Reynolds number in each initial condition, therefore an experimental equation that is able to quantitatively calculate the dimensionless melting mass is presented. It is seen that the melting Nusselt numbers increase again in the middle of the melting process. The ice cylinder continues to melt in spite of the small temperature difference between the ice cylinder and the solution. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res, 37(6): 359–373, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/htj.20211     

Initial-value system for linear smoothing problems by covariance information

A Cauchy system suitable for real-time calculation of the solution of integral equations with semi-degenerate kernels of the linear least squares smoothing problems for nonstationary signal process is developed using invariant imbedding theory. Digital simulation results indicate that the algorithms presented are leasible.     

Saturation measurements on electron spin resonance signals in amorphous silicon films

The dependence of the electron spin resonance signal intensity on the microwave magnetic field was investigated for amorphous silicon prepared by r.f. sputtering. The spin-lattice and the spin relaxation times T₁ and T₂ were determined by a new saturation method. As a result it is suggested that the electron spin resonance linewidth is determined by g-factor anisotropy, that T₂ is 10–100 times longer than the T¹₂ determined from the linewidth, that T₁ for samples annealed at below about 250°C is proportional to T^-1.9 and that most of the spins for samples annealed at above 400°C are probably due to dangling bonds in amorphous regions surrounding crystallites newly produced in the process of crystallization.